


Worse Things Than Failure

by QDNinjas



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-16
Updated: 2013-01-16
Packaged: 2017-11-25 19:02:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/642010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QDNinjas/pseuds/QDNinjas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Fourth Kazekage's relationship with his wife had always seemed calculated, arranged due to diplomacy, and doomed from the very start. That isn't the case, however. The obligation of being a Shinobi of Sunagakure has a way of demolishing even the strongest of bonds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Gift

The first gift he’d ever given her was a pastel pink and orange Temari. She covered her eyes with her hands but couldn’t hide the smile growing larger and larger upon her face as he told her to “open” and held out the ball.

Her feverish grin diminished slightly at the sight of the present, a look of confusion hidden behind her steel blue eyes. His forest green ones met hers, and he flinched despite his ingrained emotional training.

“Well this is a shock,” she teased, resting one hand on her hip and tugging at her ecru scarf with the other, “and here I was expecting diamonds.”

“You informed me that you wanted no such things.”

“Oh hush, Yondaime.” The blonde smiled, her bangs nearly shadowing her eyes, “I was merely teasing. Here, let’s have a look.” She held out a hand and for a moment, he took that small part of her entirely in. How could a hand so delicate and enticing aid in the killings of numerous Shinobi?

How could one woman be filled with so many contradictions?

The brunette set his thoughts aside and plopped the Temari into his lover’s hand. He looked up towards the ceiling, desperately hoping she’d view the gesture as nonchalant, all the while hoping even more that she would truly like her gift.

After what seemed like an eternity, a small sigh broke the silence of the room, catching Yondaime’s attention. With calculating yet bored eyes, he watched her stuff the colorful ball into her vest pocket and sent him a smirk mischievous enough to make the hairs on his arms rise to attention.

“Karura?”

The girl in question let out a soft chuckle at the accusation in his tone, and began to fasten her scarf around her head and walked towards the door.

“I was just imaging how absurd our first child’s name would have been had you have gotten me a purse or sandals for a birthday present.” She turned halfway, her blonde bangs and dark eyes the only things visible behind the makeshift sun-protector.

“Temari isn’t half bad.”


	2. Destruction

They told her that her chakra was not fit for the wind technique.

It was too erratic, spontaneous, untamed…Karura liked to believe these were all just infamous descriptions of potential power. The elders told her otherwise.

“Wind users must have precise chakra control, like your brother.” they would advise. Being able to slash through the bulls-eye on a single target with one sickled gust from a hundred yards away was crucial in the wind technique. Blowing the entire arena to hell in one fell swoop was not.

The wind users were prided on being exact while Karura was monstrous in her form, demolishing everything in her way to defeat the enemy.

The elders called her reckless, a disgrace to the art form of the Wind Release.

Yondaime called her magnificent.

To watch her during training, spars, and missions, glide out her iron fan with lightning speed and rearrange landscapes with a single thrust of her arms, was a sight to behold.

He would never tell her until years later, and even then only in vague detail, but it was one of the reasons why he fell for her. Her subtle power which seemed to cascade off of her in the presence of others erupted like lava while on the battlefield. That rare, unhinged power was beautiful.

So beautiful in fact, that when his seven year old daughter walks triumphantly into his office and tells him she will be the next great Wind Release user, it takes all of his restraint to keep from crying.


	3. Sins of the Father

Yondaime was not a fearful man. Some might say he lacked that emotion entirely…or all emotions for that matter.

He sought answers to problems with strategic reason and rationality, always judging a situation through the lens of common sense over something as fleeting as feelings. He couldn’t help it. It was all he’d ever known.

When his peers were being taught defensive blocking at the academy, Yondaime was in the desert learning to slaughter. His first prey was a week old calf, frail and pitiful. He was told by his instructors to put the beast out of its misery, and without a second’s hesitation the six year old withdrew his kunai and penetrated the jugular of the unsuspecting creature. Blood poured out by the gallon, and the legs of the animal spasmed and contorted until it finally slumped over in its own liquids.

The boy did not cringe. He did not cry, or wet himself, or vomit at the sight.

He stared down into the crimson river beneath his sandals, some of it soaking beneath his own toes. Staring at the pile of flesh, rotting in its own juices, all Yondaime could think to mutter under his breath was, “How pathetic”.

This quickly earned him the respect of Shinobi five times his age, and he was trained under the most skilled and sought after in all of Sunagakure. But the strongest assassins also lacked the most empathy, and as such, Yondaime grew knowing nothing other than following instructions and completing missions, by any means necessary.

He was not always like that, though, despite his best efforts to trick his mind into thinking this was so. No child, no matter how talented or pure of Shinobi blood, could be an instinctually merciless killer. That was the funny thing about old memories: you might not recall specific details, but you can always remember how you felt. A small dot of insecurity had always dwelled inside of Yondaime’s gut, like a parasite, growing and festering into a bottomless pit the older he became. Yes, Yondaime was not a fearful man, but he did have one thought plague his mind to the brink of unimaginable anxiety. It swallowed him whole most nights, to where he couldn’t breathe or stop the shaking.

Failure.

The impending reality of it only became more real as greater responsibility fell onto his shoulders: a wife to protect, his two children to teach and provide for, an entire village to govern. A village that was quickly eating away at itself from lack of funds and resources. It would all be his fault, soon. The blame would lie solely on him, for letting his homeland evaporate into the very dust he was born to manipulate.

He would do anything to keep from failing.

Anything.

So when Elder Chiyo turned to him, soaked in bloody garments, and whispered that the sealing process had been a success, his eyes lit up with pride. His village would finally prosper. He had done it. He would go down in history as the Kazekage who saved Sunagakure from the pits of extinction. He was no longer a failure.

He turned to his wife, sprawled across the hospital cot with eyes wide open but not able to view a thing, and all joy drained from his face.

Yondaime learned that day that there were, indeed, worse things than failure.


	4. Sparring

“Damn it, Yondaime.” the twenty year old hissed under her breath, blonde hair secured tightly behind a single ponytail. She resisted the urge to tug at her scarf, an old habit she knew her opponent would pick up on as a sign of apprehension. He was going easy on her…no, it was worse than that. He wasn’t engaging, period. He was more than content playing the sitting duck and it infuriated her to no end. In one swift motion Karura darted a kunai towards his chest, making sure not to aim for any arteries just in case he truly was off his game.

The opponent in question dodged the blade effortlessly, yet remained at a protective distance, never once drawing nearer.

He was being passive, over-using his defense versus his offense and leaving himself highly susceptible to losing this match.

It angered him almost as much as it angered his opponent.

Yondaime had never had any qualms against battling Kunoichi. From the moment you received your Hitai-ate you were no longer bound to your gender as far as Sunagakure was concerned. You were a Shinobi, plain and simple, and would live, breathe, kill and die as one.

The young man knew this to be true, but when he barely managed to evade a razor sharp gust of wind aimed for his head, he ignored his instinctual reflex to counter-attack and chose to double his distance instead.

Images flashed through his mind beyond his control: those same legs draped in scars from past missions were under his sheets the very night before, caressing his own. Those arms, toned and built from swaying her iron symbol of destruction back and forth, enveloped around his naked back before the sun came up. Her cold, blue eyes, slanted into slits from tactical concentration had once been closed, completely trusting and at peace, with her head rested firmly against his chest.

He couldn’t attack that body.

He couldn’t attack her.

Karura was literally biting her tongue to stop herself from screaming “liar” at the top of her lungs. He told her nothing would change. She had noticed it for days now, since their intimacies began, unbeknownst to everyone else; his need to protect her. It was growing stronger and stronger, seeping onto the battlefield, of all places, like a poisonous gas…too late to control once it was already present.

“Time.” was all she allowed herself to spit out, as she undid her hair and clasped her fan closed in the blink of an eye. Technically their match was far from over, the sundial opposite them indicating it had only been fifteen minutes, but Karura knew she had an even larger problem on her hands.

Things were changing.

A relationship had begun.


	5. Coddling

Yondaime watched the ever moving woman from his perch on the window seat. He craned his neck to observe the scene, unbeknownst to her; going against the natural arch of his back which demanded he stare front and center to blow the smoke from his cigarette outside. But he couldn’t pull his eyes away from her. 

And it wasn’t out of lust.

“Karu-”

“The stew should be done soon, and then we can leave.”

He stared blankly, first at the rows of containers filled with rice, pork, chicken, and leeks scattered across the table, and then at the blonde culprit, ferociously stirring a pot with enough force to rattle the stove. 

Yondaime took another long drag to calm his rising irritation. Had he known his girlfr-…teammate would play Mother Hen for her brother whenever they would have to go away on missions, he would’ve opted for a different partner ages ago.

The weasely little creep was sixteen, after all, not six.

“That should be enough!” Karura triumphantly beamed from across her small apartment, as she eyed her creation full of pride.

“For Yashamaru or the village?”

“I see you’re finally developing a sense of humor, Yondaime.” She retorted in a mock tone, her voice dripping with enough apathy to rival her lover’s. The stoic mask faded just as quickly as it had appeared, however, and she tilted the pot to drip her concoction into, yet another, storage container.

“You baby him.”

She stopped her pouring immediately, but didn’t meet her accuser’s gaze. He inhaled one last time from his cigarette before stamping it out on her sill and flicking the noxious stick out the window below. It wasn’t a light topic to bring up, but Yondaime never was one to shy away from uncomfortable issues that needed dealing with…that is, if it didn’t directly involve himself.

“We’ll be gone for a week. He needs to eat.”

“His skills as an adequate Shinobi are debatable but I assume even he can use a stove.”

That did it.

Piercing blue eyes met dark green eyes, and for a moment the air seemed to thicken in the already claustrophobic living space.

“You think insulting Yashamaru will somehow make you stronger?” she questioned, a smirk developing over her lips that seemed too foreign on her face outside of the battlefield. “Time and time again you expose your greatest character flaw, Yondaime: all ego and no confidence.”

Yes the air had definitely gotten thicker.

Yondaime was not one for taunts and jabs. Where Karura took pleasure out of toying and reducing her opponents to emotional heaps with her words, Yondaime let his silence and power speak for him.

But even he had his limits.

“You call yourself a soldier for Suna but no honorable Shinobi would set up their own blood for failure. All you’re doing is coddling him to his gra-”

“He’s all I have.”

The devilish grin had disappeared. Her mask had slipped. She wasn’t wielding her fan and screaming at him, nor was she darting kunai left and right in an attempt for him to take back his words. All she was doing was standing there, arms firmly at her sides, and staring at him.

Yondaime swore she was staring through him.

There was no need for further explanation. Karura did not need to flop to the floor and weep about her parents or her childhood or her losses and Yondaime did not need to feel pity and lift her up and coo sickeningly sweet apologies into her ear. Their relationship was not built on such naïve ways of thinking.

He cast his gaze to the floor, backing down from the mess he had caused. He examined the cracks in the tiles that housed small sprinkles of sand. No matter how much effort you put in, a home in Suna could never truly be clean. It was an inevitable truth.

No, their relationship was not built on childish, obligatory, infatuating guilt. It was a factual love. Some might even call it ‘cold’.

“I hope you know that I will not stand for our children to be raised in such a sheltered manner.”

Karura scoffed and returned to her stew, pouring what was left from the metal pot into the plastic bin. It took every ounce of her learned emotion training to keep from smiling.

Yondaime, on the other hand, let the smallest smile linger on his lips like a kiss, as he went back to observing his lover from the window seat.

Some might call their love cold, but they would never be able to say it wasn’t real.


	6. Hereditary

How she wished she would’ve looked back.

Her life was so simple just moments before and she had taken it all for granted. Temari and Kankuro were sprawled across the living room floor, drawing pictures of animals and made-up weapons with thick crayons firmly grasped between their tiny fists, while their mother was busy washing dishes in the kitchen. 

Karura was lost in her own thoughts, a luxury that was rare with two dueling, rambunctious toddlers running circles around the twenty-seven year old. There was so much of Yondaime and herself in her children that, when it didn’t make her chuckle, it made her want to cry. No one could doubt that Temari was her father’s daughter; her wit and sharp tongue was fit more for a teenager than for someone who hadn’t even been alive for more than half a decade. There was no doubt in either parents’ mind that the girl would excel as a Shinobi…it was obvious even at such a young age. There was only so much physical strain one could put on a three year old, so most of her training was psychological. Though Karura knew it to be necessary, she voiced her concerns in the dead of night to her husband, when the thoughts swirled through her mind just before sleep came. She remembered those nights:

“Too much emotional training at her age could be detrimental.”

“Not enough could be just as detrimental. You’ve seen the boy.”

Karura sat upright and stared down at her husband who was lying flat on his back, eyes staring straight up as if to count the cemented grains of sand on their bedroom ceiling.

“He’s just a baby, Yondaime. You don’t expect him to cry? You don’t expect him to get scared? He’s barely two!” She cursed herself for raising her voice, but civility be damned. Karura watched the way Yondaime attempted to train Kankuro. It seemed that the toddler could never get the simplest things right in his father’s eyes: he got too distracted, didn’t take simple orders well, whined and cried at the drop of a hat. It seemed both parents’ worst fears for their youngest differed from the others’: Karura’s being that Kankuro would grow up repressed, resentful, and feeling unworthy; Yondaime’s being that his son would never surpass his female sibling…that he would wind up a failure.

The bedroom was silent, the only noise coming from outside the window as the desert wind nipped at the glass.

A rough voice broke through the deafening bedroom, and Karura swore she could physically feel the reply snake up her spine.

“There’s too much of you in him.”

“And too much of you in her.”, was the cutting retort, as both husband and wife drifted off to sleep, with backs pressed against one another’s and scowls carved on their faces.

Perhaps it was the warmth of the water against her hands, or the calming fragrance of the dish soap, but it was only until Karura felt frantic tugging at the hem of her apron did she snap out of her reverie.

“Mommy!” her three year old called out, a mix of confusion and annoyance hidden in her deep teal eyes; a look that Karura decided was much too old to be on the face of such a young child.

“Door, mommy, door!”

The sound that hit Karura shook her to her very core, and she cursed herself for having been so oblivious to it. The banging that vibrated off of the walls of their home was not from a neighbor or comrade, but something else. Something much more sinister.

Karura could feel it in her bones.

“Stay.” was the only demand she let leave her lips, her expression striking fearful obedience into the heart of her daughter. The toddler flinched momentarily, but quickly regained control of her nerves and nodded swiftly, tensing every muscle in her tiny body.

Four more ferocious knocks rang throughout the home, and it was only until Karura scooped up her son, sat him next to his sister in the kitchen, and withdrew her kunai from her thigh-strap, did she open the door.

ANBU.

Five to be exact. Plus one: her brother.

“Yashamaru, wha-”

“Orders from the Kazekage, ma’am.” One of the assassins interrupted, his voice slightly distorted and muffled from underneath his mask. “You are to be escorted to the Kazekage’s office for a private briefing. You are instructed to leave your weapons, and children, here.”

Karura could sense the anxiety laced in Yashamaru’s chakra, though he desperately tried to stifle it. She knew something was wrong. Private briefings were never taken lightly amongst Kages, and to involve one’s own spouse was even more taboo. The presence of numerous ANBU on sight was a testament to just how ominous this operation was.

“I suppose that’s why you’re here, then?” Karura pressed half-heartedly, trying to ease her brother’s nerves. Once the siblings made eye contact, however, the sliver of play that Karura once held on her features disappeared instantly. She stared into the eyes of her brother, and saw emptiness.

He slowly walked past her; his legs leading him through the home from sheer memory, as he willed his mind to somehow link with Karura’s to express what he couldn’t say aloud:

I am sorry, sister.

I am so sorry.

Karura never turned around but could hear the faint squeals and laughter from her children upon seeing their beloved uncle. She imagined Temari’s quizzical eyes doing calculations in her sponge-like brain, boisterously inquiring as to why her uncle seemed ‘off’ during this particular visit. She was so observant for her age. She thought of her little boy, more than likely too busy trying to distract his sister by making crude faces and tugging at her hair than to notice any slight changes in the family dynamic.

Her life would forever be changed. She couldn’t place how, or why, but a painful feeling deep within her chest told her this was so. Her marriage, her children, would never be the same after this day.

She needed to see her babies, those innocent smiles on their faces. She needed to tell them she’ll be back soon, and that she loves them.

“Lady Karura,” she’s snapped out of her thoughts by the curt voice of one of the ANBU. Karura’s gaze lingers into space, unaware of how her neck had somehow turned towards the living room without her knowledge.

“It is time.”

She is a mother.

But she is a Shinobi first.

Yashamaru looked up momentarily to see a swinging door and a lone kunai resting on the mantle.

I am sorry, sister.

I am so sorry.


	7. Consummation

There were few times in Karura’s life where she admitted to hating her village. She could count them all on one hand.

She remembers the very first time she announced her hatred for her homeland: she was left to survive on her own in the desert for 3 days, as a vigorous survival exercise. If you returned home before the designated time, you failed. If you died, you failed. In Karura’s mind, you were better off failing by dropping dead than by returning to the village with your tail between your legs. She was a naive eleven year old genin when she departed, and in 72 hours, returned back a sunburnt and dehydrated ‘little bitch’, as her sensei would say. 

She was delirious; so much so that even she didn’t catch her own words slip from out of her mouth until her arm was seized in a death grip, sending electrifying pain rippling through her tender, charred flesh.

“Don’t you ever say that again,” her gruff sensei hissed, his grip tightening to add extra emphasis. “You hate Suna so much do you? Well I’ll put you back in that desert for the rest of your miserable life! I’ll banish you! And if you even think of crawling back to the gates we’ll have your head hiked up on a spear! Do you hear me? You little bitch!”

Karura had stopped listening after his false claims of banishment. She doubted some no-name Shinobi could pull enough strings to have a kid exiled into the desert. Her mind went to happier times to escape the screams, threats, and physical pain. She thought of her brother, and how the both of them used to travel to a distant oasis and swim together on extra hot days. She imagined the water on her skin, and for a moment everything felt cooler and more refreshing, and not so hellish.

Her arm flopped down by her side which snapped her out of her daydream, and she watched the back of her sensei grow smaller and smaller.

Years later, when her best-friend was decapitated during a mission, Karura screamed all night and cursed everything to hell: Shinobi, battles, weapons, her enemies, and of course Suna. Looking back, her ‘hate’ towards Suna for her 3-day long mission was so childish and fleeting; but this? Her heart ached. She felt she would never recover from the pain, and that she would forever curse Suna’s name for allowing one of her only friends to rot on the battlefield.

Time healed her though.

Having her brother speak encouraging words to her throughout the days when she was too depressed to leave her bed had saved her. Having Yondaime sit next to her, either rubbing her shoulder soothingly or standing still enough to be a shoulder to cry on helped her as well. Those acts are what brought her out of it all.

But ever since then, there had always been an undercurrent of disdain for her village.

She knew, rationally, that Shinobi died. People died. And that a region had nothing to do with that natural order. But Karura watched the way Suna operated, and how the very people who fought and put their lives on the line to maintain stability in their country were viewed as cattle.

Once she had children it became all too apparent. There were no talks of how cute or happy her daughter seemed, only inquiries about her chakra control, her level of obedience, whether or not she had started simple weaponry training yet or taijutsu first.

You hardly ever notice how warped your very foundation is until you take a moment to step back and take it all in. Karura had, and ever since she had not been pleased.

Yes…deep down inside, there had begun to fester a loathing for Suna.

All of those occurrences, though, were minuscule in comparison to how she felt now. She was shaking, either out of fear or rage, and had broken out in a cold sweat. She ground her teeth together, and willed her legs not to collapse from under her.

She hated this village.

She hated Sunagakure.

But most of all, she hated him.

“And,” Karura began, her voice clawing out of her throat like the last breath of a dying man, “I am to work as an incubator for this…thing?”


End file.
